Hispanics who are eligible to vote are less likely to register and less likely to cast a vote than either whites or blacks.

About 54% of Hispanics who were eligible to vote registered in November 2006. Among whites and blacks, the figure was 71% and 61%, respectively.

This figure is not based on the total size of these groups, in which case Hispanics would be expected to lag, since many of them are illegally present. It's based on the number of legal residents who are eligible to vote.

Several [Democratic legislators] tended to see Latin American immigrants and even Latino constituents as both more dependent on and accepting of active government programs and the political class guaranteeing those programs, a point they emphasized more than the voting per se. Moreover, they saw Latinos as more loyal and "dependable" in supporting a patron-client system and in building reliable patronage networks to circumvent the exigencies of political life as devised by the Founding Fathers and expected daily by the average American. ...

While acknowledging that they may not now receive their votes, [Republican legislators] believed that these immigrants are more malleable than the existing American: That with enough care, convincing, and "teaching," they could be converted, be grateful, and become dependent on them. Republicans seemed to idealize the patron-client relation with Hispanics as much as their Democratic competitors did.

This is hardly surprising, given the rampant corruption endemic throughout Central and South America.

Republican open border enthusiasts frequently claim that refusal to allow immigration law-breaking will turn the momentous Hispanic political force against the GOP. Nevermind that such an argument relies upon a willingness to sacrifice values and goals for purely partisan reasons, something that is hardly appealing to anyone who isn't receiving a paycheck from the party. The tocsin is fallacious. From the 2002 elections to the 2006 elections, for every one new Hispanic voter, seven new white voters went to the polls:

Hispanics accounted for 5.8% of the votes cast in 2006, up from 5.3% vote in 2002. In absolute numbers, an additional 800,000 Hispanics cast ballots in the 2006 election compared with the 2002 election.

Whites accounted for 81% of the votes in 2006, unchanged from 2002. In absolute numbers, an additional 5.6 million whites cast ballots in the 2006 election compared with the 2002 election.

Think about that. I'd previously argued that if Republicans convinced ten percent of the Hispanic electorate to abandon the Democratic party and throw their support behind the GOP, it would be a political wash if but 1% of white voters turned from the Republicans in disgust of such pandering.

More revealing, though, is to think of it like this: If every single new Hispanic voter pulled the lever for a Republican in the 2008 election, the GOP would gain nothing if one out of seven whites consequently went against him. Phrased in another way, if Republicans could do something to pick up one out of ten new white voters, it would be politically worth turning off every single new Hispanic voter--the GOP would still come out ahead.

Hispanics are increasing their share of representation among the total electorate, but whites clearly remain the 800-pound gorilla of American politics.

Yet the motivations extend beyond partisan dominance. The establishment forces have loosely overlapping motivations behind their support for the end of US sovereignty. The Catholic Church sees an opportunity for growth through the accretion of an impoverished, less intelligent Hispanic population from historically Catholic countries. Big business sees cheap labor willing to accept sub-standard labor conditions without complaint, with the added benefit of being able to subsidize the costly externalities of importing a Mexican proletariat on the net taxpaying American citizen. The political class, comprised of both Democrats and Republicans, sees a populous that will let it aggrandize power, accepting corruption and unwilling to challenge them as they grow the size, scope, and cost of government.

We need to disrupt this by keeping the pressure on. Immigration, because it is tied to everything from wealth disparity to disease prevalence, from welfare use to educational attainment, is the single most important issue we face. Stay on your Congressional representatives to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, go after employers who take advantage of subsidized immigrant labor at the expense of the native taxpayer and the native poor, demand an end to unskilled immigration, and advocate that legal immigration be determined by a merit system that ensures immigrants enhance the economic and social quality of life of Americans.

2 comments:

"Yet the motivations extend beyond partisan dominance. The establishment forces have loosely overlapping motivations behind their support for the end of US sovereignty."

To the (bad) actors already named, you can add:

- The public education cartel: Importation of a poor, dysfunctional cohort is a tailor-made vehicle for shaking down the taxpayers for more money. "It's for the chiiillldren" they will wail.

- Major media companies: You think that now that they've spent billions of dollars setting up Spanish-language infrastructure they're going to let outmoded concepts like national sovereignty and assimilation get in their way? Not a chance.

- Large consumer products producers and retailers: A variation on the above, they see a young demographic whose brand loyalties are not yet formed. Let us not forget also that a young, poorly educated demographic is also more easily manipulated. These companies don't want an educated, well informed, objective consumer, they want a somewhat slow, gullible consumer. In other words, people who have enough money to buy their stuff, but who are not bright enough to question demonstrably bogus advertising claims.

Yes, public education is especially important to name (I'd group the others more broadly under the big business moniker, although you're right on there as well).

Hispanics perform poorly in school, with a high school graduation rate that is slightly lower than that of blacks. As they continually become a greater percentage of the school age population, test scores will continue to suffer. This will lead to calls for more funding, more special education, smaller student-to-teacher ratios, and on and on.